


tell me we'll never get used to it

by feather_cadence



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, oh my god they were roommmates...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 12:55:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20778920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feather_cadence/pseuds/feather_cadence
Summary: Ben, Sammy, and Lily come up with some rules for living together. Lily tries to figure out just where it is she fits.





	tell me we'll never get used to it

**Author's Note:**

> this is honestly just a bunch of scenes of them living together bc its all i think about that somehow got to 6000 words. enjoy!!

“Look, if we’re all living together, we gotta establish some - some rules,” Ben says, from where he’s leaning on his elbows on the kitchen counter.

Lily rolls her eyes and turns on the couch to face Ben. “Just because I call it the Bro Cave-” she puts as much sarcasm as possible into this word - “doesn’t mean we need a set of _rules_ like we’re a bunch of college guys that don’t know how to do the dishes, Arnold.”

Sammy gives a pointed look to the dishes stacked in the sink behind Ben, which Lily ignores, rather successfully. Ben sighs, like he’s squaring up for a long fight.

“I’m with Ben,” Sammy says, with a shrug. He isn’t quite looking at Lily - he hasn’t figured out how to do that quite yet. She’s only been living in Ben’s apartment for a few weeks, and she can tell Sammy is still trying to learn how to live with that. She won’t lie and say that being around him doesn’t set her on edge, but whatever uneasy truce they’ve drawn up is just going to have to work for now. However long it is that now lasts. “It can’t hurt to at least figure out who’s in charge of taking out the trash.”

“Of course you’re on his side,” she says. She considers, for a second, really fighting this - she does have to keep up appearances as the local argumentative bitch, after all - but something stops her. She puts as much vinegar in her voice as possible when she says “fine, we’ll write up some rules,” but Ben’s nearly ecstatic reaction doesn’t seem to take into account her tone.

Next time she’ll just have to use more vinegar.

…

Lily knots the trash bag shut with more aggression than really necessary and hauls it towards the front door, rolling her eyes at Ben as she passes him.

“There is not -” she says, “- a _rabid raccoon_ in the dumpster.”

Ben puts his hands in front of him defensively. “I swear to god I saw it. It tried to rip out my jugular, dude. My _jugular_. I could have _died_.”

“Mhm.” says Sammy, from the other side of the kitchen. “Were its eyes glowing?”

“No, and not funny. It was rabid, though. Mouth foaming and everything. It could have laid its eggs in my brain.”

“Raccoons don’t lay eggs,” Lily says, before realizing she’s still holding the trash and turning back towards the door.

Ben gestures emphatically in her direction. “They do! It could’ve killed me!” She hears more than sees him turn back to Sammy as he realizes that she’s out the door, continuing to try to defend himself. “I’m not even joking, it could have been the end of me.”

The door swings shut behind her, cutting him off, and she breathes deeply in the chill March air. She should have grabbed a jacket, she thinks, as she pads across the porch and down the driveway. There’s still snow on the ground in most of the small yard, and she shivers as she trudges a path around the side of Ben’s small house, where the trash bins are. Honestly, with the way the trees creep close to the houses here, despite the neighbors on all sides, she wouldn’t be too stunned to actually see a raccoon out here. If that warrants Ben’s frantic dash into the house two weeks ago after allegedly seeing one and subsequent perching on the counter for almost half an hour as he insisted that the raccoon would follow him inside was another story.

She tosses the bag into the bin, without being attacked by any rabid animals, and crunches through the snow back to the front door. The first of the house rules were the easy ones: Sammy cooks, so Ben does dishes. Lily takes out the trash, because Ben is too scared to. Lily folds up the blankets that she sleeps under every morning, and places them in the closet, to get them back out the next night. Sammy vacuums, because he doesn’t seem to mind it. They each do their own laundry.

Lily won’t pretend that it’s easy for her to live there, that there’s not still a tension that seems woven into the air, but the routine makes things a little easier. And with how bad things had gotten back in February, she admits that the structure is good for her. And living with other people. Even if one of those people is Sammy Stevens, who still acts distant, who still sometimes leaves the room when she walks into it.

It doesn’t bother her. Or at least, that’s what she’ll tell you if you ask.

She slips back into the house, glad to be back in the warmth, and reminds herself to put a jacket on that hanger right by the door, so she can just grab one on the way out. Something about that thought makes her palms itch uncomfortably, but she doesn’t take the time to identify why.

In the kitchen, Ben is leaning on the counter next to a small pile of peppercorns that he’s throwing at Sammy. Sammy is glaring at him, and Ben is grinning from ear to ear.

Lily moves to duck back into the living room.

“Hey, Lily, you wanna help in here?” Sammy says, the hesitation evident in his voice. “I thought Ben was here to do something, but the only thing he’s doing is being a nuisance.”

Lily only hesitates for a split second before heading back into the kitchen. Sammy’s face is twisted in an expression like he just tasted a lemon, and Ben is looking back and forth between the two of them with obvious concern, but she’s careful to remain expressionless.

“Right,” she says, “What do you need me to do?”

He tosses her an onion. “Wanna chop this?” Ben has already retrieved a knife and a cutting board and handed them to her, and she just shrugs and starts to peel it over the sink, the papery skin flaking off in her hands.

“We both know this is just an attempt to see me cry, Stevens.”

“Lily, I’ve seen you cry more times than I can count. I think I’m good. It’s not a pretty sight.”

This is the part of whatever fragile relationship that’s delicate, that’s still liable to fall apart at the seams. It’s some semblance of what they had in the past, twisted and new and unfamiliar but also more familiar than she cares to admit.

“You’re no better,” she says. He chuckles. Ben has gone dead still, as he tends to during most of the interactions Lily and Sammy have, like he’s in a room with skittish animals he doesn’t want to bolt - or, alternatively, to attack him. Depends on the day.

Lily ignores him, and chops the onion with measured movements. The kitchen is silent, but it’s not in a bad way. More something closer to companionable.

It almost puts Lily on edge.

…

Exasperation is written in every line of Sammy’s face as he looks up from the dining room table.

“Lily,” he says, “please tell me we’re not listening to Rumors again.”

Lily tosses her phone on the table and leans on the back of the chair next to him as Second Hand News starts playing. “Fleetwood Mac is an American classic, Sammy. Also, check the rules. I’m the only one allowed to choose the music.”

Ben, standing next to the fridge, peers over the handwritten list of their house rules posted there. “Yeah, it does say that Lily is the only one allowed to choose the music,” he says with a shrug. “Although I’m pretty sure that you wrote that, Lily.”

The list, which was originally a single post-it note, is slowly growing into a messy, handwritten monster - two sheets of paper taped together, inane rules scrawled in pen and pencil in a mix of handwriting, from Ben’s startlingly neat script to the absolute mess that is Sammy’s. Lily’s cramped, barely legible handwriting spells out ‘Lily is in charge of music’ at the bottom of the list, beneath Ben’s most recent rule about rinsing the oatmeal out of the jar before leaving it in the sink to solidify.

“Look, there’s only so many times I can listen to the Goo Goo Dolls and Foo Fighters before I commit a crime,” she says, glaring at Sammy. “And we both know that Ben would put on either a musical or that weird group from Big Pine, and no one here wants that. Except you, Ben.”

Ben nods in agreement, with a shrug. Emily leans back from the table and smiles good-naturedly smiles at Ben. “The Big Pine band isn’t _that_ bad,” she says.

“You don’t have to defend him. They’re pretty bad,” Lily says. Emily laughs.

Sammy just looks mildly offended. “I listen to good music!”

“_Sad_ music, Sammy. You listen to _sad_ music. There is only so much of that this house can take, and Ben agrees with me even if he’s too much of a coward to say it. Hence, the new rule.” Ben makes a noise of protest, but doesn’t actively disagree.

“Right, because Fleetwood Mac isn’t sad at _all_,” he says. Behind them, the speaker starts quietly playing Don’t Stop, and Lily gestures at it emphatically.

“Not sad. Besides, it’s a rule, so it’s not up for discussion.”

“You listened to The Chain four times last night, Lily. In a row.”

“It’s a good song,” Emily adds, not looking up from the book she’s peering over. She reaches over to grab a notebook that Sammy is resting his elbow on, and he obligingly lifts his arm.

“Thank you, Emily,” Lily says. “I think you’re the only rational person left in this house.”

Emily glances up to grin and shrugs slightly. “It’s a hard job, but someone’s gotta do it. You wanna play Silver Springs next?”

“Ben, add that Emily can choose music too,” Lily calls over her shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah,” Ben grumbles as he rummages through the junk drawer for a pen. The kettle on the stove starts whistling and he tosses a pen on the counter and crosses to retrieve it and lift it off the burner. 

“I can’t believe this,” Sammy says, raising his hands in mock offense. Lily rolls her eyes, and walks into the kitchen to help Ben pull mugs down from the cabinets as he grabs the teabags. There’s an odd twinge in her chest when she grabs her favorite mug, white with a faded logo for a local firewood company - something unfamiliar about having a sense of belonging like that. When did that happen?

“Sammy, we still love you. Just not your music taste,” says Emily, patting Sammy on the arm. He laughs as Ben and Lily carry the mugs back to the little table. There’s barely any space for them among the scattered books, assorted papers, and notebooks, but Emily pushes a stack of books to the side to clear a spot for them.

Lily takes a second to be surprised at the ease with which she exists here now, the way she moves through space without hesitating. It’s another thing that crept up on her, that she didn’t realize was happening until it already had. The feeling of having roots, of having connections to this house, the place, is vaguely unsettling - but not in an entirely bad way. Just surprising.

“You try too hard to think, there, Lily?” Sammy asks. Somewhere, layers under the sarcasm is a type of concern she taught herself to hear years and years ago, thousands of miles from here.

Lily rolls her eyes. “Better be careful. Glass houses,” she says. He just shakes his head and turns back to the papers spread in front of him.

Lily curls her hand around her mug and feels the warmth in her palm as she pulls a book from the stack and flips to the table of contents. From her phone at the center of the table, Silver Springs starts playing.

...

Lily wakes up to see a light coming from the kitchen.

The unfortunate thing about sleeping in the living room of a house full of people with a variety of sleep issues is that someone will inevitably wander into the kitchen, or the bathroom, or out to the porch at an unreasonable hour, and will likely wake her up. Or, that is, they would wake her up if she didn’t have her own slew of sleeping issues that meant she was, usually, already awake.

She sits up on the couch and peers into the kitchen to see Sammy’s silhouette, hunched over the sink with his hands braced on either side, shoulders set and head tipped forward. He’s not moving except the steady rhythm of his breath, deliberately even. 

Lily makes as much noise as possible as she swings her legs out to the coffee table and tosses the blankets to the other side of the couch, watching as Sammy shakes his head and unhunches his shoulders. She reaches for the remote and clicks the TV on, bathing the room in blue light. She listens to Sammy’s footsteps as he leaves the kitchen and pads into the living room, before sitting heavily on the couch next to her.

There’s a long list of house rules that aren’t written or spoken, or even acknowledged: when Ben gets too focused on the notebook work, Sammy will loudly mention that he’s going to get groceries and tell Ben to come with him. When Emily goes quiet at the mention of the rainbow lights, someone will change the subject. When Lily comes home with one too many bottles of wine, Sammy will stay up with her - hovering at her periphery so she just knows he’s there. When Sammy has nightmares, Lily will sit next to him on the couch and turn on the TV - just so he knows she’s there.

It’s just a rule.

Neither of them says anything for a long time, letting the TV play some infomercial quietly, both of them staring straight ahead. When she glances over at him, she can see how tired he is, written in his face. He’s too exhausted to hide his vulnerability, the fear and heartbreak plain as day in his eyes.

Lily’s sure she doesn’t look much better.

“Same one?” she asks, real quiet.

“Mm.” he says wordlessly, dropping his chin onto his chest. “Guess the void isn’t very creative.”

She gives a humorless chuckle. A new infomercial starts, but it looks the same as the one before.

Lily had the same nightmare a few weeks ago, when she had been sleeping in Sammy’s room, and it wasn’t an experience she liked to think about. The whole dream felt like trying to breathe underwater, wading through a darkness like molasses that clung to her skin, hands reaching out, a shape with glowing eyes that was still there when the dream was over. It had rattled her more than she wanted to admit, and she’s not entirely sure how Sammy manages to get any sleep at all knowing that the same dream will follow him, night after night.

Sammy sighs like all the air is going out of him and leans his head back, looking up at the ceiling.

“No need to be dramatic or anything,” she says.

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah.” There’s a pause where she can practically hear the gears in his brain turning, trying to figure out what to say. “Look, I just wanted to say-”

“Yeah, just because it’s one in the morning doesn’t mean you can get all sappy on me, Stevens. You better watch it or I’ll wake up Ben,” Lily says.

“Right,” Sammy says. Both of them know that it’s rare enough that Ben sleeps at all that they generally should let him when he does. Frankly, that’s a rule for everyone in the house. “Thanks anyway.”

Lily rolls her eyes. “You’re pushing it.”

“I know.”

Lily doesn’t look away from the TV. Sammy doesn’t say anything else, and it’s not long until she hears his breathing even out as he falls back asleep. 

It’s still an odd thing, this proximity, relearning how to deal with each other, another set of rules on top of all of the ones they already have. She’s still more mad at him than she can name, for years upon years of unresolved issues, but sitting next to him on the couch at one am she can’t help but be glad that she’s here.

The people in the infomercial all throw their heads back and laugh, in unison. Lily closes her eyes against the glow, and falls asleep.

…

Lily lets the door slam behind her as she storms out of the house.

She shoves her hands into her pocket and marches through a blanket of fallen leaves, right up to the line of trees behind the house, and stares out into the darkness. She paces there, at the edge of the tiny yard behind Ben’s tiny house in this tiny fucking town, feeling the anger radiate off her in waves. Feels the chill of the night air boiling. Her hands clench into fists in her pocket.

The thing about this kind of anger is she can’t remember exactly what she’s angry at, or what she and Sammy were arguing about seconds ago. All she remembers is every cruel thing he ever said, every time he refused to talk to her, every fight they’ve had before. She flips through all the things she wants to go back inside and yell at him in her head - he’s selfish, he’s a coward, he’s a scam and a failure - pictures the way his face would twist up and all the bitter things he would say back. It feels like her head is stuck on a loop there, on repeat, playing out what could happen. It feels, in an incredibly vague way, like she is drowning.

She hears the door swing open behind her and whips around, ready to shout down whoever it might be, but it’s Emily silhouetted in the light from the house, wrapped in a sweater and padding across the damp grass towards her. Lily keeps her shoulders set - but doesn’t snap.

“They’re heading to the station,” Emily says, the sound of a car starting behind her as if on cue. She pauses as the sound of the engine fades into the night. “Are you ok?”

“Fine,” Lily snaps. She doesn’t look at Emily. She looks out into the forest, patchy with moonlight and shadow. She can feel the tension in her body like a wire - like if she moves at all she’ll snap in two.

“Right,” Emily says. “Because after a two-hour-long argument that ended with you storming out of the house, why would you be anything other than fine?”

“Did you pick the sarcasm up from your boyfriend? It’s not a good look on you.” Lily snarls. 

She regrets it as soon as she says it.

“Not cool and you know it, Lily. Come on.” Out of the corner of her eye, Lily watches her reach out as if to touch her elbow, before she thinks better of it. “We’re on the same side, here.”

“Are we, Emily? What side would that be?” Lily says. She knows she shouldn’t, knows Emily is only trying to help, but something in her feels like it’s unraveling, like it’s coming to pieces in her hands. What gives Sammy the _fucking_ right to do this to her, to make her feel like this? “Because it looks to me like you’re on Ben’s side and Ben’s on Sammy’s side and then there’s me, stuck in this _shithole_ of a town with no one that seems to give a shit and no one outside this town that gives a shit and he still thinks he’s _fucking_ right, that he did the _right fucking thing_ and stupid Lily Wright is out to get him so _no_, I don’t think you’re on my side. I don’t think anyone is. It’s _my fucking side_ and that’s it."

If the moon were any brighter, the look of tenderness on Emily’s face would have sent Lily spiraling. As is, it feels like a knife in her side. She stares at the ground beneath her feet, the layer of fallen leaves in bright colors washed out by the dull light. She can feel her fingernails carving crescents into her hands.

“I…” Emily says, voice quiet. She reaches out and puts a hand on Lily’s shoulder, and Lily almost collapses on the spot. “I’m really sorry that it feels like that. I can understand where you’re coming from, and -” she gives a bitter little laugh - “it’s not a good feeling.”

“What are you, my therapist?” Lily says, all instinct. “Sorry. Sorry, I -” she takes a deep breath and looks straight up, and the stringy clouds crossing the sky. She closes her eyes and tries to just breathe, to uncurl her fists in her pockets and unwind the tension in her shoulders, focusing on the feeling of Emily’s hand bleeding warmth through her thin jacket. “You’re right. We’re...we’re on the same side.”

Lily really tries to believe that, as she says it. She tries to think about what that side is, what it means, and the only thing she can think of is that it’s the side of people who want to get her brother back. Somehow, that thought doesn’t make her feel any better. That her only connections she has right now are built on the back of the worst thing that ever happened to her is not a reassuring thought.

Emily tilts her head, as if deliberating. “Lily, did something happen recently?” As if she can feel the way Lily’s shoulders tighten again, she backtracks. “You don’t have to tell me, but I just...tonight seemed worse than usual. You guys haven’t fought like that in a long time.”

Lily keeps her eyes closed. Half of her is still on the defensive, is still too fragile to think about talking to someone, even Emily Potter, who is the kindest and strongest person she’s ever known. The other half is desperate - someone being pulled out to sea, scrabbling for a foothold in the sand.

“It wasn’t that unusual. We still fight a lot.”

“Not like that,” Emily says, shaking her head.

Lily lets out all the air in her lungs and opens her eyes, still looking out to the dark shapes of the trees. She can feel Emily’s eyes on her. Even if she doesn’t say anything, she knows Emily will figure it out. Put all the pieces together.

“Look, I-” she shakes her head, as if to clear out all the stray thoughts. “I just realized today that it’s been a couple months since I talked to Pippa, ok?”

Emily just nods. She doesn’t ask anything stupid like if Lily misses her or tell her she should call or give her half thought out advice, she just nods.

“It’s hard to lose people like that,” she says. “I’m really sorry.”

“Yeah,” Lily says. “It’s fine. It’s how it is.” She runs a hand through her hair and sighs. “I maybe should have avoided starting a fight tonight.”

“Too late to change that,” Emily says with a small smile. “Sammy’ll get over it. He’s got Ben to talk him down.”

“Mm.”

“Lily, you know that you have them too, right? Even if it doesn’t feel like it, those two really care about you.” Emily says.

It’s not a thing she can convince herself, right now. She takes Emily’s words and tucks them away, somewhere she can look at them later, when she feels more like she’s on steady ground. She nods, half meeting Emily’s eyes. “I know,” she says, real quiet. 

Emily smiles, looping her arm around Lily’s shoulders and pulling her in for a hug. Lily leans into it, feels some of that tension wound in her spine dissipate. The part of her that is drowning grabs on, holds on, gasps for air.

“Hey, it’s cold out here. Let’s get inside and I’ll make some tea, alright?” Emily says.

“Yeah,” Lily says. “I’m sorry. For...everything.”

Emily shrugs. “It’s fine. Things happen.” She smiles and turns back towards the house, her arm still around Lily’s shoulders.

Lily looks up at the thin light of the stars overhead, and listens to her breathing.

She tries to convince herself that everything Emily said is true.

…

The King Falls Hardware Store smells like wood shavings and plastic in a way that’s homey and close. An old cat wanders lazily between the aisles, and the shelves are stacked with paint cans and fishing wire and nails in a way that seems haphazard and perfectly organized at the same time.

Like most things in King Falls, it seems to be steeped in a kind of small-town ambiance that Lily thought had to be fake when she first got here. She’s still not totally convinced that it’s not. She wanders through the aisles as Ben chats with the store's owner (a friend of a friend of his mom’s whose son was the drum major Ben’s junior year, from what she’s gathered) and tries to find any sense of order to the aisles, with little success. All she finds is that old cat.

“Hey, sorry about that,” Ben says, half jogging up behind her. He bends down and scratches the cat’s head. “The plaster we’re looking for is a couple aisles over, and they have hinges for the door.” He hesitates as he stands, and gives Lily an odd look, one that she can’t quite decipher. “There’s also paint, on the last aisle.”

Lily isn’t quite sure why Ben brought her along, to be honest. She shrugs. “Lead the way.”

Ben ducks under a display of fishing poles that reaches between the narrow shelves and into an aisle stacked with various tubs of wood stain, varnish, asphalt patch, and plaster. He crouches to examine the bottom shelf, and Lily leans down to follow his gaze.

It was Ben’s idea to turn the tiny room that he had called his office, even though it had clearly never been used as anything more than a glorified closet, into a room for Lily once he had realized she was here to stay, for a while. There was enough room for the bedframe they had picked up from a garage sale down the street and a desk and bookshelf that Sammy had retrieved from the storage unit with most of the furniture from his and Jack’s house and not much else, but it beat sleeping on the couch.

“Yeah, this should be what we need,” Ben says, passing her a tub of plaster. “Why do they only sell them in such big tubs? Who even needs this much plaster?”

“People with serious structural issues that have decided that they’ll deal with that another day,” Lily says. “Or artists.” Ben barks a laugh.

“I’m pretty sure that’s a different kind of plaster.”

“Any reason I should trust you on that?”

“Mm, good point,” Ben says, tilting his head. “Although I did hang around a lot of art kids in high school.”

“Ah, so that’s where the vaguely untrustworthy energy comes from. Knew it had to be something.”

Ben shakes his head. “Did I somehow forget to tell you about how I was in Grease in high school? Is that a fact about me you just missed?”

“I try not to think about it,” Lily says with a shrug. The two of them sidestep a pile of two-by-fours and turn the corner to a wall full of wall connectors and hinges, glinting dully in the low light.

Ben sighs. “You wanna. Grab that one off the top shelf?”

Lily grins and hands it down to him. She doesn’t even have to say anything. The short joke is implied.

Ben rolls his eyes and tosses the hinges into the basket. “Whatever. Like you were any better in high school.”

“It was high school in Florida. There wasn’t much in the way of an arts department.”

“Oh, right,” Ben says. He squints at her. “Wait, are you trying to tell me you were a jock?”

“Played soccer for five years,” she says, shifting the tub of plaster back to her other hand and leading the way back to the front of the store. “Why is that so hard to believe?”

“Oh, it’s not. Like, at all. Actually, it makes a lot of sense. When did you stop playing?”

Ben’s got a way of asking questions that catches Lily off guard, an earnestness that comes with it that surprises her into answering, every time. She thinks he really would be a good journalist. She also thinks that it’s a damn miracle that Sammy managed to keep so much of his life secret with Ben around.

“College,” she replies. “The other girls on the team didn’t like me and I was too busy anyway, so Jack and I swapped and he joined rugby while I became a writer for the newspaper.”

Ben nods. There’s a look in his eyes that she’s noticed every time Jack is mentioned, a look that isn’t that different to how he looks as he talks over the intricacies of some information he found about Perdition Wood with Emily - like who Jack is another mystery he has to solve based on the tiny bits of information that she and Sammy mention. A puzzle to put together. She had seen that same look on Jack’s face countless times, and she thinks distantly that if - when - they find Jack, he and Ben are gonna be instantly inseparable.

“Hey, did we still need outlet covers from that fire you started in the kitchen?” Lily says, blatantly changing the subject. One fact about her life was about her limit for the day, frankly.

Ben’s posture changes immediately to the defensive. “Hey, that was _not_ me.” Lily squints at him. “I cannot _believe_ Sammy called in just to tell you it was me when it was absolutely his fault. He put tin foil in the microwave!”

“I have, on tape, evidence that it was you, but I’ll just take that to mean we still need outlet covers,” Lily says, cutting down another aisle

“Yes,” Ben says, begrudgingly. “We still need outlet covers.”

The old cat wanders past them. It doesn’t pay them any mind.

...

The screen door squeaks as Lily opens it, and Sammy half turns to her as she crosses to sit next to him on the porch steps. He gives a small smile, and she responds with the same.

“Did I interrupt your moping, Stevens?” she asks, only partially joking. Sammy rolls his eyes and wordlessly accepts the beer she passes him.

“Mhm. I had another hour and a half of moping scheduled, actually. Not sure what I’m gonna do, now,” he says.

“Right. Like Ben would let you out of his sight for that long and not lose it,” she says. He barks a laugh and rolls his eyes.

“You’re right. I honestly don’t know how he managed before I got to town.”

Lily has known Sammy for long enough that she hears all the hidden words buried in that sentence - the clipped way he says ‘got to town’ and the weight of everything behind that, the implied thought of what would happen if he had left. 

She leans her shoulder against his, and neither of them moves.

Past the porch, snow drifts slowly down, muting the rest of the world. There’s already an inch on the three cars in the driveway, covering the small lawn, drifting on the street. Everything soft edges and fuzzy light, the fat flakes catching the orange of the streetlights as they spiral downwards.

Lily doesn’t pretend that there isn’t some part of her that is still amazed by the snow, most of the time. She did grow up in Florida, after all.

“Five years,” Sammy says, almost under his breath. “It’s been five years.” His eyes are closed. Lily keeps looking out at the snow.

“Five years,” Lily echoes. 

There’s a lot she wants to say, that’s been sitting in the back of her throat for years. That she doesn’t blame him anymore. That she never wanted to believe Jack was actually dead. That she wished she had told her brother she loved him in their last conversation. That she wished she had known they were engaged. That they should have talked sooner.

She looks out at the world gone soft.

“I wish you were at his funeral,” she says, her own voice quiet now.

She feels him go tense, but he doesn’t move away.

Something in the pit of her stomach drops - an old fear of vulnerability, still there in her chest. She pushes past it.

“I mean, holding a funeral was useless anyway, now that we’re gonna get him back, and there won’t even be the sixth anniversary if everything goes ok, but I wish you were there. Just...someone to talk to. Someone that actually knew him. Like, really knew him.”

Sammy turns his head towards her, looking at her out of the corner of his eyes. His face is twisted in an expression she can’t quite name.

“There were all these aunts and uncles,” she continues, “and people that hadn’t seen us in - in years, telling stories of when we were kids. Saying all that stupid funeral shit - he was so young, and I know what you’re going through, and I’m so sorry for your loss, and it all gets easier with time - just the _dumbest_ shit.”

Sammy chuckles, quietly.

“If you were there, we could’ve laughed at that, I think,” she says.

“I...I wish I could have been there,” he says. He pauses, then tentatively puts an arm around her shoulders.

Lily doesn’t mention the screaming match she got into at the funeral with her parents because it was too soon, because there was still a chance he was out there, or when she sat out in the graveyard away from the lights with her phone in hand, seconds from calling Sammy just for anyone, anyone at all, to talk to. She doesn’t mention that her parents haven’t really spoken to her since then.

Somehow, there’s the feeling that those things won’t get buried forever, anymore. She holds a distant understanding that she’ll be able to talk about it, one day, and that the people around her will listen.

It’s a nice thing to understand.

The wind whistles along the street. Lily can hear Ben and Emily laughing in the house behind her.

“We’re not gonna have the sixth anniversary of this, huh?” Sammy says.

“No,” Lily says, “No. Next January first, Jack will be here with us.”

“Yeah,” Sammy says, smiling softly. If she closes her eyes, Lily can almost picture this day one year from now, hearing Jack’s laughter from the house behind her too.

The screen door behind them squeaks, and both of them turn to see Ben sticking his head out of the door, grinning. The warm light from inside the house spills across the porch and out onto the snow-covered lawn.

“You guys ok?” Ben asks. The concern is...oddly endearing. A lot of things about Ben Arnold are.

“Yeah, yeah,” Sammy says, stretching. “We’ll be in in a second. Someone’s gotta keep you in line.”

“Right. Sure,” says Ben, “because you do such a great job of that.”

Sammy rolls his eyes and shrugs, but stands as Ben ducks back inside the house. He offers a hand to help Lily up, and she takes it.

“Hey Lily?” he says, pausing with his hand on the doorknob. “I love you.”

“Yeah. I love you too,” she says. She puts one hand on his shoulder, and he nods.

She follows him back into the warm little house, leaving the quiet, snow-filled world behind them. They walk into the kitchen and Sammy makes fun of Ben and Lily in turn, and she does the same in response. Ben’s leaning against the fridge, one shoulder half-covering the list of rules, with tacked-on pages and handwritten notes, crossed out lines and explanations, in pencil and pen and marker, wrinkled and water-stained. A tiny, quiet reminder of what makes this place theirs, the four of them, laughing in this kitchen. A reminder of the difference a year can make.

Lily does the best to hide the fondness in her eyes as she watches the scene play out, same as it does every night. 

She forgot about the vinegar a long time ago.


End file.
